“Does domestic life suit you?” Chase asked.
“Very much.” Kevin continued his perusal of the chamber.
“Your deciding to take separate chambers within a month of marriage implied otherwise.”
“They are not separate. They are extra. There is a difference.”
“If you say so.”
Kevin knew that tone of voice. It was Chase’s it-is-not-for-me-to-question tone that had ten questions waiting behind it.
“I’m not regretting my marriage, if that is what you think.”
“I don’t think anything except that this is odd.” Chase gestured with his glass around the library.
“If you think so, why did you offer this apartment?”
“You said you were going to do it, and this was available and well situated. It isn’t for me to make your decisions.”
“Yet it is for you to question them, it seems.”
“I only have one question. Does Rosamund know about this?”
“She does. She is in complete agreement that we needed these extra chambers.”
Chase raised his eyebrows, just enough to be irritating.
“What?”
“Nothing. Except—”
There was always anexceptin conversations like this.
“If I did not know you better, I would say it looks like you are setting yourself up for liaisons within a month of taking your vows,” Chase finished. “But, of course, you don’t have liaisons. Until the one with Miss Jameson.”
“If you must know, this place is for the enterprise. We both wanted an address other than our home. Also an office other than in our home. A place reserved for those matters, so they don’t intrude where they shouldn’t.”
Those eyebrows went up again, for a longer spell. “Ah.”
“That was an extremely annoying ‘Ah.’ It sounded as if the expert at discreet inquiries had concluded he had his answers.”
“All I have concluded is that you have decided that a business partnership and a domestic one don’t sit together well in one place.”
That was an understatement. Since their marriage, Kevin had several times cursed the agreement he had signed about leaving Rosamund’s share in her hands.
“We had a row,” he said. “It was small, but it became a poison affecting everything. I had already proposed that I needed a place to pursue my interests, and we agreed to separate those two parts of our lives.”
“So whenever the two of you discuss the enterprise, you will do it here?”
“That is the thinking.”
“And you believe that if you argue, you can leave the argument here?”
“Of course. Why not?”
“It is unlike any marriage I know, but you are unlike any man I know, so perhaps you have found a perfect solution. Now, I have to go to the City. I’ll leave you and Brigsby to settle in.”
The notion of being settled in by Brigsby had Kevin striding to the door in Chase’s wake. “I’ll ride part way with you.”
